Selected Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT 6)

Recycling of WEEE by Magnetic Density Separation

Bin HU1*, Lorenzo GIACOMETTI2, Francesco DI MAIO1, Peter REM1
1
Recycling Engineering, Civil Engineering and Geosciences, Delft University of Technology, Delft, the Netherlands
2
Dipartimento Di Ingegneria Chimica, Mineraria E Delle Tecnologie Ambientali, Università Di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Email: Bin.Hu@Tudelft.nl

Abstract: The paper introduces a new recycling method of WEEE: Magnetic Density Separation. By using
this technology, both grade and recovery rate of recycled products are over 90%. Good separations are not
only observed in relatively big WEEE samples, but also in samples with smaller sizes or electrical wires.
Keywords: recycling; WEEE; density separation; magnetic density separation; soild waste

1 Introduction
In the last decade, high growth rates in electronic in-
dustries have led to huge amounts of waste of electrical
and electronic equipment (WEEE). The disposal rate of
WEEE is accelerating because the global market for elec-
tronics is far from being saturated and on the ground that
the lifespan of electronic goods is becoming shorter.
WEEE accounts for 4% of all municipal waste in Euro-
pean Union (EU) [1]. In 2005, EU produced 8.3-9.1 mil-
lion tones [2] and yet about 90% of WEEE is landfilled,
incinerated or recovered without any pre-treatment [2].
The European commission estimated that WEEE would
grow annually 2.5% and would reach about 12.3 million Figure 1. Metal distribution in size range
tons in 2020 [3].
WEEE is one of the most complex waste streams in The paper summarizes the current mechanical tech-
terms of materials and components. With a number of nologies for recycling of WEEE, furthermore, a new
hazardous chemicals and components, as lead in printed technology of WEEE recycling, Magnetic Density Sepa-
circuit boards (PCB) and cadmium in semiconductor ration (MDS), is introduced.
chips, WEEE may cause serious environmental problems
2 Mechanical Treatment of WEEE
if not properly recycled or disposed of. However, WEEE
contains significant quantities of valuable materials such Mechanical recycling is one of the widely used treat-
as metals (66%), precious metals, high quality plastic ments for WEEE thanks to its high capacity and low cost.
(19%) and other components which can be profitably be Five mechanical treatments of WEEE are introduced in
recovered. The main valuable metals contained in WEEE this section.
are copper, lead, iron, aluminum and zinc. In addition,
WEEE involves precious metals, like gold, platinum, 2.1 Wet Shaking Table
palladium and silver, which are used in the manufactur- The wet shaking table consists of a slightly inclined
ing of electronic components [2]. Because of the potential deck, and it has small longitudinal riffles molded into the
risks of WEEE and the considerable resources and en- surface. The movement of the table and flow of water
ergy contained, improving of WEEE recycling is crucial cause the material to separate. The dense compact parti-
for both economy and environment. cles move in one direction along the riffles whilst the
Zhang et al discovered that the metal distribution, in lighter particles, with larger surface areas, flow over the
personal computers (PC), for instance, is a function of riffles with the water. However, the wet shaking table is
size range (Figure 1) [4]. It is easy to be observed that size dependent. This technique works successfully on the
aluminum is mainly distributed in the coarse fractions (> fine fraction, but the coarser fraction is very poorly sepa-
6.7mm), and about 50% exists in the > 9.5mm fractions. rated [5].
However, other metals are primarily in the fine fractions
(< 5mm). Therefore, it is essential to upgrade the metal 2.2 Jigging
content by screening and furthermore, by chosen an op- Jigging is widely used in mineral processing to con-
timal separation technique for the different sizes. centrate heavy minerals. The working principle of a jig is

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Selected Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT 6)
based on the interaction of gravity, buoyancy, drag and
acceleration. In a wet jig, a bed of particles is periodi-
cally lifted by a water column. As the mass of particles
settles down onto the screen, a segregation develops ac-
cording to density. In the jigging treatment, important
operational parameters of the jig, as stroke length, jig-
ging speed and initial bed height, play key roles in the
process. It has a rather wide range of treatment: 1-150
mm [6].
2.3 Eddy Current Separation
The operability of eddy current separation (ECS) is
based on the use of rare earth permanent magnets. It was
initially developed to recover non-ferrous metals from
shredded car scarp and municipal solid waste. The tech-
nology separates materials on the basis of the particles’
ability to conduct electricity. Particles that conduct elec-
tricity are charged by electrostatic induction and attracted
to an electrode. It has a workable size range of >5mm [7].
2.4 Sink-Float by Heavy Medium
Sink-float is a gravity method for separating particles
with different densities. By employing a medium with a
density about 3000 kg/m3, particles, like Al, which has a
density lower than that of the medium float; particles
with a higher density, like Cu and Pb, sink. By using
sink-float separation, it is possible to obtain products
with both high grade and recovery after separation, how-
ever, for fine particles, this process may have a low ca-
pacity, since it takes long time for fine particles to be
settled, especially when the particles have similar density
to the medium.
2.5 Kinetic Gravity Separation
The concept of kinetic gravity separation (KGS) is the
differences among particles on terminal velocity. Parti-
cles are fed at some point in a stream of fluid that is
flowing in a horizontal direction. Therefore, particles
have a horizontal velocity component that is the same as
that of the fluid and a vertical component that depends on
their density, size and shape. At some level with respect
to the feeding point, the particles are collected in a series
of compartments that are aligned in the direction of the
flow. Particles with a high vertical speed end up in the
compartments close to the feeding point, whereas parti-
cles settling at a lower speed are collected further down-
stream. The KGS is able to process metal-rich materials
from WEEE in the size range 0-15 mm with 95% recov-
ery rate [5]. But a pro-process of screening is necessary
3 Magnetic Density Sepration
Magnetic density separation (MDS) is utilized in recy-
cling and mineral processing industry since 2007. By
changing the magnetization of the liquid, the MDS proc-
ess provides a good solution for minerals and precious
metals concentrating and polymers separation [8-10]. Mag-
netic fluid was used for recycling of WEEE waste in
1999 in Germany [11]. Advantages of MDS are the high
capacity per hour, low operating costs, environmental
impact and suitability to process large amounts of parti-
cles with a wide size range. One of the important applica-
tions of the MDS in recycling industry is separation of
light and heavy non-ferrous products in bottom ash,
which provides a promising application of MDS in recy-
cling of WEEE.
3.1 Prinicple of MDS
The basic principle of the MDS is to use magnetic liq-
uid as the separation medium. Different from a medium
with a single density, the density of the magnetic liquid
in a special magnetic field varies with the distance from
the magnet. Such liquid contains magnetic iron oxide
particles with a size about 10-20 nm, which suspend in
water. The apparent density of the liquid in a magnetic
field increases because the magnetic nano-particles are
attracted by the magnet. The apparent density of the
magnetic liquid ( U app ) in magnetic field is determined
by:
2S MB0 2S z / w
U app Uliquid  e (1)
gw
Where Uliquid and M are the density and the magneti-
zation of the magnetic fluid, respectively, B0 and w are
the properties of the magnet: magnetic induction and
wavelength of the field. z is the vertical distance from the
magnet.
Due to this reason, MDS provides the opportunity to
separate different materials in one process. The apparent
density is dependent on both the magnetization of the
magnetic liquid and the magnetic field. By varying the
magnetization, when the magnetic field is certain, the
apparent density decreases with z (Figure 2).
3.2 Terminal Velocity
The terminal velocity of a particle (Re=2~500) in
magnetic liquid results from the balance of drag, gravity
and buoyancy:
for input materials, in order to avoid fine particles with
high density misplaced in the low density fraction.
As summarized above, most of the mechanical proc-
esses are dependent on not only the density of particles
but also size and shape of particles influence the segrega-
tion.
279
2  U p  U app  Vg
v (2)
C U app A
Where g is the acceleration of gravity, ȡp is the density
of the particle. V and A are the volume and the cross-
section area of the particle, and C is the coefficient of
drag, which is a function of the shape of the particle.
978-1-61896-002-3 © 2011 SciRes.
 Selected Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT 6)

Figure 3 describes the theoretical trajectories of three
aluminum particles with different shapes and sizes in
MDS (M=3000 A/m): two particles with drag coefficient
0.8 and one particle with C=2; two of the particles have a
thickness of 0.5mm, and the other one is 1mm thick. As
addressed in the figure, within 1.5s, all three aluminum
particles settled at a height of 0.06m from the magnet
surface. Obviously, for smaller particles, longer time is
necessary for separation. Even so, however, compared
with other techniques, MDS requires much shorter time.
As shown, the cut point of the separation can be placed
according to density only. The size and shapes are much
less relevant, which is because that particles stops set-
tling when the density of the particle is equal to the ap-
parent density, regardless of the shape or size. Therefore,
theoretically, size and shape of particles do not influence
the MDS.
cial attention was given to electricity wires (sample III)
in the wake of their variable densities and shapes. The
magnetic particles were removed since the attraction of
the magnet on ferrous particles affects the trajectory of
non-ferrous particles in MDS.
Sample I, II and II
1) Size distribution: As presented in Figure 5, the
particles of Sample I are much coarser than that of
Sample II and III. Over 75% of Sample I has a size larger
than 8mm, nevertheless, almost all Sample II and III are
smaller than 8mm.
2) Compositions: Nearly 50% of Sample I is made up
of non-ferrous metals. Compared with I, the non-ferrous
contents are much less: about 10% and 20% respectively.
Moreover, the 20% of non-ferrous in Sample III is
mainly Cu wires. In these all three samples, electricity
wires coated with plastics are found. In both Sample I
and III, these coated wires occupy approximately 8%, but
only less than 1% were discovered in Sample II. In
samples II and III, plastics constitute up to 70 wt%.

Figure 2. Apparent density differs with z in MDS

Figure 4. Size distributions of samples

Figure 3. Theoretical trajectories of particles 100%

80% dust
4 Experiment glass
wood
60% wire-plastic+wire
4.1 Materials ferrous
plastic

Three samples were processed by MDS, in order to 40% CPB

non-ferrous

understand the influence of particle size and shape on

20%
WEEE recycling by MDS. Samples I and II were from a
WEEE recycling plant located in Belgium. Although 0%
both of them were pre-processed, there were still consid- Sample I Sample II Sample III

erable amount of valuable metals contained in both frac-

tions which can be extracted by MDS. Additionally, spe- Figure 5. Compositions of three samples

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Selected Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Waste Management and Technology (ICWMT 6)

may contain various types of shapes and wide range of

sizes.

Magnet

Separation Channel
Figure 6. Shape analysis of metallic particles in Sample I

1) Shape: Shape analysis was only carried out for the

metallic particles in Sample I, since the metallic constitu-
ent includes more complex shapes than others and Sam-
ple II and III were too fine to be handpicked for the Overflow
analysis. Figure 7 shows that 19% of the metals are
folded sheets. Further analysis discovers that the coopers
have a shape of either wire or haywire.
2) Density: It is obvious that the metals have certain
densities according to the types of materials. However,
others may have varying densities based on the composi-
tions. For instance, the density of the PCB varies be- Figure 7. MDS instrument
tween 1600 kg/m3 and 2000kg/m3 depending on the pro-
portion of the metals contained. The wires coated with Table 1. Separation results of MDS
plastics have variable density changing from 2000 kg/m3
to 2200 kg/m3. Sample Product Al
Coated
PCB Cu
Other Other
wires heavies lights
4.2 Set up Fa 29.6% 15.8% 29.7% 0.2% 0% 24.7%
Grade a
The MDS is basically consisted of a separation chan- S 0% 1.6% 0% 35.1% 63.2% 0%
I
nel and a special designed magnet placed underneath. F 100% 94.0% 100% 1.0% 100% 100%
Recovery
The separation channel is placed on the magnet with an S 0% 6.0% 0.0% 99.0% 0% 0.0%
angle about 2.5% in order to create a natural overflow. F 0.5% 3.2% 3.8% 0.4% 0% 92.1%
The MDS produces two products: float and sink. The Grade
S 0% 0% 1.4% 30.1% 60.7% 7.8%
magnetic fluids (3000 A/m), and the light components II
F 100% 100% 95.5% 8.8% 98.9%
flow over the magnet and end up in the sieve (Figure 8). Recovery
Conversely, the heavies sink on the bottom of the chan- S 0% 0% 4.5% 91.2% 1.1%
nel. F 5.9% 0% 94.1%
Grade
S 1.8% 98.2% 0%
5 Results III
F 86.8% 0.0% 100%
Recovery
The results of the separations by using of the MDS are S 13.2% 100% 0%
presented in Table 1. 90% grades for non-ferrous heavies a. F: float product; S: sink product.
with high recovery rates in the sink fraction are possible
for all three samples. For Sample I and III, the grades of
the heavies raised to more than 98% from 50% and 20% Acknowledgement
respectively. The heavies in Sample II are concentrated The present work is partly of the work is sponsored by
to 90% from 10% and with a recovery rate higher than the European Commission under the FP7 Collaborative
92%. However, because of the complexity of the shapes project “W2Plastic”, Grant Agreement No. 212782.
especially for the wires, small amount of copper and
coated wires were found in the float and sink fractions
respectively. This was clearly observed in the sample III.
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